Asia
Asian art at the Cantor Center began with Leland Stanford Jr.’s stated intention to collect Chinese and Japanese objects after he returned from his 1884 trip to Europe, during which he died of typhoid fever at the age of 15. When the museum opened in 1894, Mrs. Stanford had begun building a strong collection of Asian art including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean objects. Since then, the collection has grown to more than 4,000 objects dating from the Neolithic period to the present.
Significant additions to the Asian collection were made in 1941 by Mortimer Leventritt, class of 1899, upon the 50th anniversary of the university. The most important pieces in the jade collection were donated in 1968 when Alice Meyer Buck gave the collection of her late husband, Frank E. Buck, to the museum. She continued adding to the collection until her death in 1979.
Patrick J.J. Maveety Curator of Asian Art
